Sony Classics
2008
Piano Starts Here: Live At The Shrine/Zenph Re-Performance
About This Album
For many serious jazz fans, no pianist has ever approached the technical mastery of Art Tatum, though his virtuoso skills usually meant he was at his best unaccompanied. Many of his recordings from the 1930s and '40s were limited by the deficiencies of recording methods at the time. Piano Starts Here, long considered one of Tatum's definitive albums, combined four solos from a 1933 studio session (his first as a soloist, aside from a test pressing a year earlier), and a fabulous solo concert at the Shrine Auditorium in 1949 (the latter issued as an Armed Forces Radio Service 16" transcription disc), which has been reissued many times over the decades. But there were several problems with these releases. The pitch was slightly too slow on the live material. A medley of George Gershwin tunes was awkwardly edited (a miserly decision to save on royalty payments) to only "The Man I Love," discarding over one minute of other compositions, including "Summertime," "I've Got Plenty of Nothin'," and "It Ain't Necessarily So." The order of the live performances was also altered.

Zenph Studios decided to use 21st century computer technology to re-create this album, both the 1933 studio session and the famous 1949 concert.
Track List (try tracks 1 and 2)

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